PART THREE
CHAPTER I
It was on our return from that first trip that I took Dominic up to theVilla to be presented to Dona Rita. If she wanted to look on theembodiment of fidelity, resource, and courage, she could behold it all inthat man. Apparently she was not disappointed. Neither was Dominicdisappointed. During the half-hour's interview they got into touch witheach other in a wonderful way as if they had some common and secretstandpoint in life. Maybe it was their common lawlessness, and theirknowledge of things as old as the world. Her seduction, hisrecklessness, were both simple, masterful and, in a sense, worthy of eachother.
Dominic was, I won't say awed by this interview. No woman could aweDominic. But he was, as it were, rendered thoughtful by it, like a manwho had not so much an experience as a sort of revelation vouchsafed tohim. Later, at sea, he used to refer to La Senora in a particular toneand I knew that henceforth his devotion was not for me alone. And Iunderstood the inevitability of it extremely well. As to Dona Rita she,after Dominic left the room, had turned to me with animation and said:"But he is perfect, this man." Afterwards she often asked after him andused to refer to him in conversation. More than once she said to me:"One would like to put the care of one's personal safety into the handsof that man. He looks as if he simply couldn't fail one." I admittedthat this was very true, especially at sea. Dominic couldn't fail. Butat the same time I rather chaffed Rita on her preoccupation as topersonal safety that so often cropped up in her talk.
"One would think you were a crowned head in a revolutionary world," Iused to tell her.
"That would be different. One would be standing then for something,either worth or not worth dying for. One could even run away then and bedone with it. But I can't run away unless I got out of my skin and leftthat behind. Don't you understand? You are very stupid . . ." But shehad the grace to add, "On purpose."
I don't know about the on purpose. I am not certain about the stupidity.Her words bewildered one often and bewilderment is a sort of stupidity.I remedied it by simply disregarding the sense of what she said. Thesound was there and also her poignant heart-gripping presence givingoccupation enough to one's faculties. In the power of those things overone there was mystery enough. It was more absorbing than the mereobscurity of her speeches. But I daresay she couldn't understand that.
Hence, at times, the amusing outbreaks of temper in word and gesture thatonly strengthened the natural, the invincible force of the spell.Sometimes the brass bowl would get upset or the cigarette box would flyup, dropping a shower of cigarettes on the floor. We would pick them up,re-establish everything, and fall into a long silence, so close that thesound of the first word would come with all the pain of a separation.
It was at that time, too, that she suggested I should take up my quartersin her house in the street of the Consuls. There were certain advantagesin that move. In my present abode my sudden absences might have been inthe long run subject to comment. On the other hand, the house in thestreet of Consuls was a known out-post of Legitimacy. But then it wascovered by the occult influence of her who was referred to inconfidential talks, secret communications, and discreet whispers ofRoyalist salons as: "Madame de Lastaola."
That was the name which the heiress of Henry Allegre had decided to adoptwhen, according to her own expression, she had found herself precipitatedat a moment's notice into the crowd of mankind. It is strange how thedeath of Henry Allegre, which certainly the poor man had not planned,acquired in my view the character of a heartless desertion. It gave onea glimpse of amazing egoism in a sentiment to which one could hardly givea name, a mysterious appropriation of one human being by another as if indefiance of unexpressed things and for an unheard-of satisfaction of aninconceivable pride. If he had hated her he could not have flung thatenormous fortune more brutally at her head. And his unrepentant deathseemed to lift for a moment the curtain on something lofty and sinisterlike an Olympian's caprice.
Dona Rita said to me once with humorous resignation: "You know, itappears that one must have a name. That's what Henry Allegre's man ofbusiness told me. He was quite impatient with me about it. But my name,_amigo_, Henry Allegre had taken from me like all the rest of what I hadbeen once. All that is buried with him in his grave. It wouldn't havebeen true. That is how I felt about it. So I took that one." Shewhispered to herself: "Lastaola," not as if to test the sound but as ifin a dream.
To this day I am not quite certain whether it was the name of any humanhabitation, a lonely _caserio_ with a half-effaced carving of a coat ofarms over its door, or of some hamlet at the dead end of a ravine with astony slope at the back. It might have been a hill for all I know orperhaps a stream. A wood, or perhaps a combination of all these: just abit of the earth's surface. Once I asked her where exactly it wassituated and she answered, waving her hand cavalierly at the dead wall ofthe room: "Oh, over there." I thought that this was all that I was goingto hear but she added moodily, "I used to take my goats there, a dozen orso of them, for the day. From after my uncle had said his Mass till theringing of the evening bell."
I saw suddenly the lonely spot, sketched for me some time ago by a fewwords from Mr. Blunt, populated by the agile, bearded beasts with cynicalheads, and a little misty figure dark in the sunlight with a halo ofdishevelled rust-coloured hair about its head.
The epithet of rust-coloured comes from her. It was really tawny. Onceor twice in my hearing she had referred to "my rust-coloured hair" withlaughing vexation. Even then it was unruly, abhorring the restraints ofcivilization, and often in the heat of a dispute getting into the eyes ofMadame de Lastaola, the possessor of coveted art treasures, the heiressof Henry Allegre. She proceeded in a reminiscent mood, with a faintflash of gaiety all over her face, except her dark blue eyes that movedso seldom out of their fixed scrutiny of things invisible to other humanbeings.
"The goats were very good. We clambered amongst the stones together.They beat me at that game. I used to catch my hair in the bushes."
"Your rust-coloured hair," I whispered.
"Yes, it was always this colour. And I used to leave bits of my frock onthorns here and there. It was pretty thin, I can tell you. There wasn'tmuch at that time between my skin and the blue of the sky. My legs wereas sunburnt as my face; but really I didn't tan very much. I had plentyof freckles though. There were no looking-glasses in the Presbytery butuncle had a piece not bigger than my two hands for his shaving. OneSunday I crept into his room and had a peep at myself. And wasn't Istartled to see my own eyes looking at me! But it was fascinating, too.I was about eleven years old then, and I was very friendly with thegoats, and I was as shrill as a cicada and as slender as a match.Heavens! When I overhear myself speaking sometimes, or look at my limbs,it doesn't seem to be possible. And yet it is the same one. I doremember every single goat. They were very clever. Goats are no troublereally; they don't scatter much. Mine never did even if I had to hidemyself out of their sight for ever so long."
It was but natural to ask her why she wanted to hide, and she utteredvaguely what was rather a comment on my question:
"It was like fate." But I chose to take it otherwise, teasingly, becausewe were often like a pair of children.
"Oh, really," I said, "you talk like a pagan. What could you know offate at that time? What was it like? Did it come down from Heaven?"
"Don't be stupid. It used to come along a cart-track that was there andit looked like a boy. Wasn't he a little devil though. You understand,I couldn't know that. He was a wealthy cousin of mine. Round there weare all related, all cousins--as in Brittany. He wasn't much bigger thanmyself but he was older, just a boy in blue breeches and with good shoeson his feet, which of course interested and impressed me. He yelled tome from below, I screamed to him from above, he came up and sat down nearme on a stone, never said a word, let me look at him for half an hourbefore he condescended to ask me who I was. And the airs he gavehimself! He quite intimidated me
sitting there perfectly dumb. Iremember trying to hide my bare feet under the edge of my skirt as I satbelow him on the ground.
"_C'est comique_, _eh_!" she interrupted herself to comment in amelancholy tone. I looked at her sympathetically and she went on:
"He was the only son from a rich farmhouse two miles down the slope. Inwinter they used to send him to school at Tolosa. He had an enormousopinion of himself; he was going to keep a shop in a town by and by andhe was about the most dissatisfied creature I have ever seen. He had anunhappy mouth and unhappy eyes and he was always wretched aboutsomething: about the treatment he received, about being kept in thecountry and chained to work. He was moaning and complaining andthreatening all the world, including his father and mother. He used tocurse God, yes, that boy, sitting there on a piece of rock like awretched little Prometheus with a sparrow pecking at his miserable littleliver. And the grand scenery of mountains all round, ha, ha, ha!"
She laughed in contralto: a penetrating sound with something generous init; not infectious, but in others provoking a smile.
"Of course I, poor little animal, I didn't know what to make of it, and Iwas even a little frightened. But at first because of his miserable eyesI was sorry for him, almost as much as if he had been a sick goat. But,frightened or sorry, I don't know how it is, I always wanted to laugh athim, too, I mean from the very first day when he let me admire him forhalf an hour. Yes, even then I had to put my hand over my mouth morethan once for the sake of good manners, you understand. And yet, youknow, I was never a laughing child.
"One day he came up and sat down very dignified a little bit away from meand told me he had been thrashed for wandering in the hills.
"'To be with me?' I asked. And he said: 'To be with you! No. My peopledon't know what I do.' I can't tell why, but I was annoyed. So insteadof raising a clamour of pity over him, which I suppose he expected me todo, I asked him if the thrashing hurt very much. He got up, he had aswitch in his hand, and walked up to me, saying, 'I will soon show you.'I went stiff with fright; but instead of slashing at me he dropped downby my side and kissed me on the cheek. Then he did it again, and by thattime I was gone dead all over and he could have done what he liked withthe corpse but he left off suddenly and then I came to life again and Ibolted away. Not very far. I couldn't leave the goats altogether. Hechased me round and about the rocks, but of course I was too quick forhim in his nice town boots. When he got tired of that game he startedthrowing stones. After that he made my life very lively for me.Sometimes he used to come on me unawares and then I had to sit still andlisten to his miserable ravings, because he would catch me round thewaist and hold me very tight. And yet, I often felt inclined to laugh.But if I caught sight of him at a distance and tried to dodge out of theway he would start stoning me into a shelter I knew of and then sitoutside with a heap of stones at hand so that I daren't show the end ofmy nose for hours. He would sit there and rave and abuse me till I wouldburst into a crazy laugh in my hole; and then I could see him through theleaves rolling on the ground and biting his fists with rage. Didn't hehate me! At the same time I was often terrified. I am convinced nowthat if I had started crying he would have rushed in and perhapsstrangled me there. Then as the sun was about to set he would make meswear that I would marry him when I was grown up. 'Swear, you littlewretched beggar,' he would yell to me. And I would swear. I was hungry,and I didn't want to be made black and blue all over with stones. Oh, Iswore ever so many times to be his wife. Thirty times a month for twomonths. I couldn't help myself. It was no use complaining to my sisterTherese. When I showed her my bruises and tried to tell her a littleabout my trouble she was quite scandalized. She called me a sinful girl,a shameless creature. I assure you it puzzled my head so that, betweenTherese my sister and Jose the boy, I lived in a state of idiocy almost.But luckily at the end of the two months they sent him away from home forgood. Curious story to happen to a goatherd living all her days outunder God's eye, as my uncle the Cura might have said. My sister Theresewas keeping house in the Presbytery. She's a terrible person."
"I have heard of your sister Therese," I said.
"Oh, you have! Of my big sister Therese, six, ten years older thanmyself perhaps? She just comes a little above my shoulder, but then Iwas always a long thing. I never knew my mother. I don't even know howshe looked. There are no paintings or photographs in our farmhousesamongst the hills. I haven't even heard her described to me. I believeI was never good enough to be told these things. Therese decided that Iwas a lump of wickedness, and now she believes that I will lose my soulaltogether unless I take some steps to save it. Well, I have noparticular taste that way. I suppose it is annoying to have a sistergoing fast to eternal perdition, but there are compensations. Thefunniest thing is that it's Therese, I believe, who managed to keep meout of the Presbytery when I went out of my way to look in on them on myreturn from my visit to the _Quartel Real_ last year. I couldn't havestayed much more than half an hour with them anyway, but still I wouldhave liked to get over the old doorstep. I am certain that Theresepersuaded my uncle to go out and meet me at the bottom of the hill. Isaw the old man a long way off and I understood how it was. I dismountedat once and met him on foot. We had half an hour together walking up anddown the road. He is a peasant priest, he didn't know how to treat me.And of course I was uncomfortable, too. There wasn't a single goat aboutto keep me in countenance. I ought to have embraced him. I was alwaysfond of the stern, simple old man. But he drew himself up when Iapproached him and actually took off his hat to me. So simple as that!I bowed my head and asked for his blessing. And he said 'I would neverrefuse a blessing to a good Legitimist.' So stern as that! And when Ithink that I was perhaps the only girl of the family or in the wholeworld that he ever in his priest's life patted on the head! When I thinkof that I . . . I believe at that moment I was as wretched as he washimself. I handed him an envelope with a big red seal which quitestartled him. I had asked the Marquis de Villarel to give me a few wordsfor him, because my uncle has a great influence in his district; and theMarquis penned with his own hand some compliments and an inquiry aboutthe spirit of the population. My uncle read the letter, looked up at mewith an air of mournful awe, and begged me to tell his excellency thatthe people were all for God, their lawful King and their old privileges.I said to him then, after he had asked me about the health of His Majestyin an awfully gloomy tone--I said then: 'There is only one thing thatremains for me to do, uncle, and that is to give you two pounds of thevery best snuff I have brought here for you.' What else could I have gotfor the poor old man? I had no trunks with me. I had to leave behind aspare pair of shoes in the hotel to make room in my little bag for thatsnuff. And fancy! That old priest absolutely pushed the parcel away. Icould have thrown it at his head; but I thought suddenly of that hard,prayerful life, knowing nothing of any ease or pleasure in the world,absolutely nothing but a pinch of snuff now and then. I remembered howwretched he used to be when he lacked a copper or two to get some snuffwith. My face was hot with indignation, but before I could fly out athim I remembered how simple he was. So I said with great dignity that asthe present came from the King and as he wouldn't receive it from my handthere was nothing else for me to do but to throw it into the brook; and Imade as if I were going to do it, too. He shouted: 'Stay, unhappy girl!Is it really from His Majesty, whom God preserve?' I saidcontemptuously, 'Of course.' He looked at me with great pity in hiseyes, sighed deeply, and took the little tin from my hand. I suppose heimagined me in my abandoned way wheedling the necessary cash out of theKing for the purchase of that snuff. You can't imagine how simple he is.Nothing was easier than to deceive him; but don't imagine I deceived himfrom the vainglory of a mere sinner. I lied to the dear man, simplybecause I couldn't bear the idea of him being deprived of the onlygratification his big, ascetic, gaunt body ever knew on earth. As Imounted my mule to go away he murmured coldly: 'God guard you, Senora!'Senora! What sternness! We we
re off a little way already when his heartsoftened and he shouted after me in a terrible voice: 'The road to Heavenis repentance!' And then, after a silence, again the great shout'Repentance!' thundered after me. Was that sternness or simplicity, Iwonder? Or a mere unmeaning superstition, a mechanical thing? If therelives anybody completely honest in this world, surely it must be myuncle. And yet--who knows?
"Would you guess what was the next thing I did? Directly I got over thefrontier I wrote from Bayonne asking the old man to send me out my sisterhere. I said it was for the service of the King. You see, I had thoughtsuddenly of that house of mine in which you once spent the night talkingwith Mr. Mills and Don Juan Blunt. I thought it would do extremely wellfor Carlist officers coming this way on leave or on a mission. In hotelsthey might have been molested, but I knew that I could get protection formy house. Just a word from the ministry in Paris to the Prefect. But Iwanted a woman to manage it for me. And where was I to find atrustworthy woman? How was I to know one when I saw her? I don't knowhow to talk to women. Of course my Rose would have done for me that oranything else; but what could I have done myself without her? She haslooked after me from the first. It was Henry Allegre who got her for meeight years ago. I don't know whether he meant it for a kindness butshe's the only human being on whom I can lean. She knows . . . Whatdoesn't she know about me! She has never failed to do the right thingfor me unasked. I couldn't part with her. And I couldn't think ofanybody else but my sister.
"After all it was somebody belonging to me. But it seemed the wildestidea. Yet she came at once. Of course I took care to send her somemoney. She likes money. As to my uncle there is nothing that hewouldn't have given up for the service of the King. Rose went to meether at the railway station. She told me afterwards that there had beenno need for me to be anxious about her recognizing Mademoiselle Therese.There was nobody else in the train that could be mistaken for her. Ishould think not! She had made for herself a dress of some brown stufflike a nun's habit and had a crooked stick and carried all her belongingstied up in a handkerchief. She looked like a pilgrim to a saint'sshrine. Rose took her to the house. She asked when she saw it: 'Anddoes this big place really belong to our Rita?' My maid of course saidthat it was mine. 'And how long did our Rita live here?'--'Madame hasnever seen it unless perhaps the outside, as far as I know. I believeMr. Allegre lived here for some time when he was a young man.'--'Thesinner that's dead?'--'Just so,' says Rose. You know nothing everstartles Rose. 'Well, his sins are gone with him,' said my sister, andbegan to make herself at home.
"Rose was going to stop with her for a week but on the third day she wasback with me with the remark that Mlle. Therese knew her way about verywell already and preferred to be left to herself. Some little timeafterwards I went to see that sister of mine. The first thing she saidto me, 'I wouldn't have recognized you, Rita,' and I said, 'What a funnydress you have, Therese, more fit for the portress of a convent than forthis house.'--'Yes,' she said, 'and unless you give this house to me,Rita, I will go back to our country. I will have nothing to do with yourlife, Rita. Your life is no secret for me.'
"I was going from room to room and Therese was following me. 'I don'tknow that my life is a secret to anybody,' I said to her, 'but how do youknow anything about it?' And then she told me that it was through acousin of ours, that horrid wretch of a boy, you know. He had finishedhis schooling and was a clerk in a Spanish commercial house of some kind,in Paris, and apparently had made it his business to write home whateverhe could hear about me or ferret out from those relations of mine withwhom I lived as a girl. I got suddenly very furious. I raged up anddown the room (we were alone upstairs), and Therese scuttled away from meas far as the door. I heard her say to herself, 'It's the evil spirit inher that makes her like this.' She was absolutely convinced of that.She made the sign of the cross in the air to protect herself. I wasquite astounded. And then I really couldn't help myself. I burst into alaugh. I laughed and laughed; I really couldn't stop till Therese ranaway. I went downstairs still laughing and found her in the hall withher face to the wall and her fingers in her ears kneeling in a corner. Ihad to pull her out by the shoulders from there. I don't think she wasfrightened; she was only shocked. But I don't suppose her heart isdesperately bad, because when I dropped into a chair feeling very tiredshe came and knelt in front of me and put her arms round my waist andentreated me to cast off from me my evil ways with the help of saints andpriests. Quite a little programme for a reformed sinner. I got away atlast. I left her sunk on her heels before the empty chair looking afterme. 'I pray for you every night and morning, Rita,' she said.--'Oh, yes.I know you are a good sister,' I said to her. I was letting myself outwhen she called after me, 'And what about this house, Rita?' I said toher, 'Oh, you may keep it till the day I reform and enter a convent.'The last I saw of her she was still on her knees looking after me withher mouth open. I have seen her since several times, but our intercourseis, at any rate on her side, as of a frozen nun with some great lady.But I believe she really knows how to make men comfortable. Upon my wordI think she likes to look after men. They don't seem to be such greatsinners as women are. I think you could do worse than take up yourquarters at number 10. She will no doubt develop a saintly sort ofaffection for you, too."
I don't know that the prospect of becoming a favourite of Dona Rita'speasant sister was very fascinating to me. If I went to live verywillingly at No. 10 it was because everything connected with Dona Ritahad for me a peculiar fascination. She had only passed through the houseonce as far as I knew; but it was enough. She was one of those beingsthat leave a trace. I am not unreasonable--I mean for those that knewher. That is, I suppose, because she was so unforgettable. Let usremember the tragedy of Azzolati the ruthless, the ridiculous financierwith a criminal soul (or shall we say heart) and facile tears. Nowonder, then, that for me, who may flatter myself without undue vanitywith being much finer than that grotesque international intriguer, themere knowledge that Dona Rita had passed through the very rooms in whichI was going to live between the strenuous times of the sea-expeditions,was enough to fill my inner being with a great content. Her glance, herdarkly brilliant blue glance, had run over the walls of that room whichmost likely would be mine to slumber in. Behind me, somewhere near thedoor, Therese, the peasant sister, said in a funnily compassionate toneand in an amazingly landlady-of-a-boarding-house spirit of falsepersuasiveness:
"You will be very comfortable here, Senor. It is so peaceful here in thestreet. Sometimes one may think oneself in a village. It's only ahundred and twenty-five francs for the friends of the King. And I shalltake such good care of you that your very heart will be able to rest."